by Erica Ridley
She parted her lips and allowed him to take possession of her mouth. The rest of her body wished for the same attention. She longed to feel his hands on her bare skin, his mouth anywhere he pleased.
Thank heavens they were in the midst of a lavishly attended masquerade. Had they truly been alone tonight…
She would not have been content with merely a kiss.
Chapter 14
Michael wrapped his arms about Lady X and wished life could always be as simple and straightforward as it seemed in that moment. He pressed his lips to her hair.
“This may not completely match your perfect day,” he confessed, “but to me it is a close second.”
“We said perfect nights don’t count,” she teased. But something in her voice made him think the only reason she teased was because what they had—whatever it was that they had—was not something they could keep. They were destined to share stolen hours together, not a lifetime.
Nonetheless, within the parameters of their hidden identities, he was determined to respond to her as honestly as he could. He had never been able to be as open with someone as he was with Lady X, and he didn’t want to spoil the magic by allowing their connection to become as superficial as all his others.
“Today was the best day I’ve had all week,” he admitted. “And not solely because I finally got to see you, although that would have been more than sufficient.”
“Oh?” She tilted her head in question.
“The past several days have been plagued with social encounters that went horribly awry, culminating in the theft from my home of a piece of my mother’s jewelry. It is one of the few mementos of her that remain, and to say I was heartbroken at its loss…” Michael grimaced. “Suffice it to say, that was the lowest point of the week.”
“What happened today to make it the best?”
“Today, the missing jewelry found its way home.” Renewed relief suffused him at his good fortune. “Once I realized the piece was missing, I distributed a drawing of its likeness to every pawnbroker in London. This morning, a messenger invited me to a small shop in Whitechapel, where I was able to buy back my mother’s jewelry for far less than it is worth to me.” He contorted his face. “There isn’t enough money in the world to pay what it’s worth.”
“That’s wonderful,” Lady X said, her voice warm. “That it returned home, that is. It’s absolutely dreadful that you were robbed. Especially of something with such emotional value.”
He couldn’t agree more. If he ever caught the contemptible blackguard who had robbed him…
“Perhaps I’m foolish.” He forced anger from his mind and turned the topic back to her. “Have you any trinkets that mean more to you than their monetary worth?”
Lady X shook her head. “I suppose I am the oddity of my family in that way. One of my siblings is a musician, and would die without her instrument. Another has a pet project she values more than her life. The only thing I would hate to lose is something inside of me.”
“Your heart?” he guessed. The question came out sounding far more serious than he had intended. Yet he didn’t look away. “Here I’d hoped I had a chance of stealing it.”
“I am permitting you to borrow it on masquerade nights,” she responded primly, then laughed.
Michael did not. The idea that he might possess a piece of her heart, even for only a few hours, had left him light-headed.
“A talent,” she said hesitantly. “I have a talent I wish I could use. Were it not unseemly for a lady, I would happily earn a living working every day of the week, if it meant being able to do what I love.”
He leaned forward with interest. “What is it you love to do?”
She opened her mouth, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. If I tell you, you might guess who I am.”
Might he? Michael straightened with interest. The fact that she considered a successful guess to be possible hinted at some level of notoriety. Intrigued, he ran through a mental list of the most infamous ladies of the ton. Of them, he tried to limit the names to only the ladies with talents capable of earning them a livable wage.
No one came to mind.
He gave up the exercise, frustrated more with himself than over any lack on the part of the ladies.
Every one of them down to a button might boast more talent than he could ever imagine. But since an earl’s society conversations were limited to “My, that’s an interesting bonnet” and “I believe this is my waltz?” Michael was singularly incapable of knowing whether he and Lady X had ever before met.
Dissatisfaction simmered beneath his contentment. He simultaneously felt that she knew him better than anyone—and that he knew her not at all. Or at least not well enough to satisfy.
He wanted more than stolen moments at a masquerade. He wanted the real Lady X.
His eyes widened in surprise at the depth of his emotion. Perhaps he, too, had been loaning her his heart without even realizing it.
If he knew her identity, they could spend far more time together. Any day of the week, not just when Lambley decided to host a masquerade. They could chat at a dinner party, dance at a soirée, promenade in the park, drop by Gunter’s for ices… perhaps even visit the stretch of river she loved so much.
A sliver of hope lifted his spirits. He would happily dispense with masquerades altogether if it meant more time with Lady X. Indeed, ceasing their double lives would be better for both of them. By attending the masquerades, they both risked the loss of their reputations if their identities were uncovered.
He was surprised to realize the idea worried him far more for Lady X’s future than for the outcome of his wager. He still intended to win. He would win. He had been a positive saint for almost three weeks, aside from a dust-up here and there with an occasional Grenville.
And, of course, the masquerades.
Everyone who presented themselves at the door was taking a risk. That was a key component of the allure. Yet the true reason Michael had always attended wasn’t in order to put a mask on, but rather to take his off. The earl mask, the rake mask, the caricatures of himself. At the masquerades, he was finally just Michael. Even if no one ever knew it.
Until Lady X. She wasn’t sitting on a stone folly with a rake or an earl. She was sitting here with him. The real him. And risking her reputation every time she returned for one of their assignations.
Because he’d asked her to risk it, he realized. His shoulders tensed. He’d met her within moments of arriving at her first masquerade. She hadn’t intended to come back. He’d begged her. Begged Lambley. Arranged with Fairfax to let her in the door without an invitation.
At the time, he’d thought he was simply arranging to spend more time with an intriguing woman. But that wasn’t all he’d asked, was it? His chest tightened. By convincing her to meet like this, he had essentially required her to repeatedly put her reputation at risk. He clenched his jaw. Oh, why hadn’t he thought it through?
Perhaps because for him it was different. Yes, his name was often mentioned in scandal columns and his countenance frequently sketched in painfully embarrassing caricatures, but such treatment had little to no impact on his societal standing.
No matter what the rumor, no matter what the drawing, he was still titled. Still rich. Still accepted everywhere.
A woman, on the other hand, was not afforded such luxury. Lady Caroline Lamb had been ruined over scandalous behavior, and she was well-moneyed, well-connected, and wed to an earl. Michael would not be able to protect Lady X if her identity became known.
Granted, a respectable woman attending a masquerade was not as severe a crime as Lady Caroline having an affair with Lord Byron and writing a thinly veiled telltale novel brimming with sordid details. Nonetheless, for Lady X the consequence of discovery would be exactly the same.
Complete social ruin.
Hundreds of otherwise respectable young ladies had lost their reputations over merely being unchaperoned in a room with a man. Much less having repeated rendezvous in
private masquerades known for openly encouraging scandalous behavior.
More importantly, he liked Lady X. The thought of her suffering any harm, societal or otherwise, was dreadful. Michael wrapped his arms tighter about her.
He didn’t want their time together to end. He wanted to get to know the real her. Wanted her to know the real him.
Wished he knew if she felt the same.
While she wasn’t looking, he sent her another long, half-infatuated glance. He couldn’t tear his gaze from her. Didn’t even wish to. Every moment he spent in her company only made him want more. The idea of doing something about it was surprisingly appealing.
Michael had never courted anyone before. Never even considered such a thing. But with her… he would at least like to pay her a proper call. Bring her flowers. See what happened next.
If only he knew her name.
But what could he do? Besides furtive, mooning glances. Whether she answered him or not, the mere act of asking her name broke the duke’s strict privacy policies. Michael would be banned for life from all future masquerades.
Gone would be the nights of just being Michael. There would be no respite from the earl mask, the rake mask, the caricatures. Would it be worth the loss?
If Lady X did grant him her name, and permission to see her again, that was no guarantee of a happy ending. She could reject him out of hand once he made his identity known. He swallowed uncomfortably.
Even if that didn’t happen, if the relationship turned sour later, he would still never be welcome again at a masquerade. Never able to return to this moment, to this life, to this freedom.
Yet the risk had never been more tempting.
Chapter 15
Two days later, Camellia still hadn’t managed to put Lord X from her mind even for a moment. She missed their long, candid talks about anything and everything. She missed the warmth of his embrace and the heat of his passionate kisses.
She missed him. And she was running out of time.
The future loomed before her, inexorable and empty. There was only one masquerade left before Mr. Bost returned to London to sign the wedding contract and submit their names to the banns. Her mouth went sour with dread.
Three weeks after the banns were read, she would be wed to a stranger. And spend the rest of her life hundreds of miles from home, alienated from her family. From everything and everyone she had ever loved.
Yet it was the right thing to do. For her parents. For her sisters. Even for herself, she supposed.
Despite Camellia’s recent attempts to make the most of London’s society events while she still had the opportunity to do so, there were no other marriage offers on the horizon, from strangers or otherwise. Her shoulders slumped.
Was it any wonder her mind preferred to focus on the upcoming masquerade, and the last chance she would ever have to spend a few final moments with Lord X?
Anticipation brightened her mood. The new emerald gown she had commissioned in honor of the occasion was nearly ready. Camellia and her sisters had spent the entirety of the previous day scouring shops from Saville Row to Cavendish Square in search of the perfect accessories to accompany the new gown.
All three sisters had pooled their resources to ensure one last magical evening. The perfect mask, the perfect feathers. Bryony had been the one to discover the crowning jewel for Camellia’s final night of freedom—delicate teardrop earrings made of intricately cut glass and trimmed with gold.
Now it was merely a matter of surviving the five remaining days until the masquerade—and the five decades of Northumberland isolation to follow. Far from everything she loved.
Rather than wallow in what she could not change, Camellia was determined to keep a smile on her face for as long as she could. For the past two weeks, she had accepted every invitation that crossed the Grenville threshold and intended to keep doing so until it was no longer an option.
She adjusted her bonnet. Today, she and her sisters were en route to Bullock’s Museum of Natural Curiosities, where Napoleon Bonaparte’s carriage was currently on display. The attraction was already the talk of the town. Camellia would be right in the thick of it.
At the prospect, her body hummed with excitement. She was discovering far too late that she preferred the tumult of the ton to her previous staid existence as a wallflower.
Or perhaps her change of heart was due to the buoyant chaos of the masquerades.
In any case, her brief time intermingling with the ton had thus far been more fun than she would have dared to hope. And ever since her run-in with Lord Wainwright at the circus, she had added a new game to the list: catching the rakehell in scandalous behavior.
She was not a vindictive enough person to go so far as to tattle to the Cloven Hoof in order to ensure the earl lost his ridiculous wager… but she was protective enough of her sisters to take private pleasure when his inevitable failure finally came. Dahlia would survive. The girls who depended on her school might not be so fortunate.
Lord Wainwright needed to learn that his actions had consequences. She lifted her chin. And that not everyone found him as charming as portrayed in the etchings.
To her surprise, however, she had thus far failed to witness the earl doing anything scandalous at all. Instead, she’d caught him admiring flowers at the botanical garden and enjoying a biscuit at Lady Sheffield’s tea. Hardly the stuff of social ruin. If one didn’t know better, one might believe him to be shockingly… normal. Respectable, in fact.
She did know better, of course. All of society did. As angelic as he might seem during the light of day, the man was infamously devilish by night.
His ridiculous wager would never have come about in the first place had his legendary amorous influence on the heaving bosoms and disappearing purity of impressionable young ladies not been the truth most universally acknowledged in all of London.
When the hackney rolled to a stop in front of Bullock’s Museum of Natural Curiosities, Camellia and her sisters alighted from the cab and melded with an impressive queue of sightseers eager to take a peek at Boney’s traveling chariot. It had been captured at Waterloo and brought to the Egyptian Hall, where one of its first visitors has been the Prince Regent himself.
Camellia could hardly wait. According to the papers, the spoils encountered inside the carriage’s dark blue walls included a gold teapot, a gold coffeepot, gold cups, saucers, sugar basins and candlesticks. All embossed with the Imperial arms and engraved with an ornate N.
“Are you here to see the liquor case, the writing desk, or the solid gold breakfast plates?” asked a droll voice from just behind her shoulder.
Camellia’s heart leapt, then fell. Although she had hoped she recognized the low male voice, it did not belong to the gentleman she wished. It did not belong to a gentleman at all.
“Lord Wainwright,” she gritted out in reluctant acknowledgment before returning her attention back to the queue. Six-and-twenty years of politesse prevented her from giving him the cut direct, but no maiden was obliged to be friendly to a rake. Especially not the one who had endangered the future of dozens of schoolgirls.
“I would bow,” he said after an extended pause, “but there’s little point when you can’t even see it.”
She sighed and turned around. “Don’t you receive enough fawning attention?”
Surprise flicked across his handsome face. “More than enough. I didn’t greet you in the hope you would swoon into my cravat. You have the singular distinction of being one of the few who do not.”
She stared back at him without responding.
He smiled. “Contrary to the apparently prevailing wisdom, it is significantly more difficult to carry on a conversation with someone in the throes of maidenly vapors than it is with a woman in full possession of her faculties.”
“Witness the poor rakehell,” Camellia murmured. “Reduced to mere conversations until his forty days are through and he can return to philandering.”
To her surprise, a touch of pink g
raced the earl’s chiseled cheekbones.
“The wager,” he said, his mouth grim. “Of course.”
She made no reply. Sharp words would cause a scene neither of them would want.
Fortunately, her sisters’ bonnets were bent together in hushed whispers a few feet ahead, and they had not yet noticed the unwanted interloper in their midst.
“Would you believe the wager had slipped my mind entirely?” he asked.
“No,” she said flatly as the crowd inched forward.
“Perhaps not entirely,” Lord Wainwright admitted. “But it hasn’t been at the forefront of my thoughts in days.”
She arched a skeptical brow. “Then how have you been staying out of scandal columns?”
“By accident, I suppose. A product of having something else on my mind.” His gaze softened, focused not on her but some pleasant memory. A happy sigh escaped his lips.
Camellia tilted her head in surprise. His dreamy expression made her believe he was thinking about someone rather than something. And if there was a woman out there who could put a look that smitten on the face of a rakehell that heartless…
She stared at him in wonder. Perhaps people could change. Perhaps she could change. Hope stirred within her. Beautiful, rebellious hope.
Her lips parted. She wanted more from life than to watch from the wainscoting. Perhaps she was now strong enough to tell her unwanted suitor she would not be entering into a betrothal. How could she? Life was too important to spend it with the wrong person.
In fact, when next she saw Lord X, if he teased her again about slipping off into the shadows for a passionate embrace…
This time, she would not tell him no.
Chapter 16
Despite standing in the center of a wide, vaulted chamber, Boney’s battered blue carriage was almost completely obscured by the dense crowd of eager Londoners swarming about the vermilion wheels and painted panels like bees buzzing about a hive.
